Czechs often lack language, management and advanced communication skills, and some foreign companies now send their Czech employees abroad on training courses to teach them how to conduct business meetings; how to logically arrive at a conclusion; and how to explain and defend the results of their deductions.

Foreign companies often find that Czech employees cannot take criticism --- they interpret it as a direct assault on them personally. This is, of course, a throwback to the communist past: if, under communism, you became the subject of official criticism, this usually involved a ritualized character assassination. You were sacked and became a non-person. In the highly ideology-driven, totalitarian communist system, each and every citizen was required --- enthusiastically, untiringly and faultlessly --- to support the ruling ideology and its aims. The discovery of any deficiency in a citizen's behavior often had fateful consequences. No wonder people still feel threatened if their work is criticized.

It is interesting that in many ways Czech society still lives in its communist past. The main problem is, of course, the Czech educational system, which is trapped in a vicious circle: the system cannot change unless the teachers change. But the teachers cannot change because the system will not allow the introduction of new teaching methods.

The Czech educational system is authoritarian by nature. The students are usually told there is only one correct way of interpreting reality and that interpretation is handed down from above, from the "authorities." You learn it by heart, you repeat it at exams --- and then you shut up. In teaching literature classes I have found, time and time again, that when I encourage students from the Czech Republic to work creatively with the literary texts, attempting their own independent analysis, they find this is "not sufficiently academic." At Czech universities, they are expected to learn by memorization from long lists of secondary literature, articles written by respected "authorities." During exams, they are supposed to enumerate what each "expert" has written on each topic. No one attempts to teach them that they should try to form their own, independent opinions. No one teaches them how to analyze things, how to express themselves or how to write.

About a year ago, while conducting interviews at a Czech university, I asked students to name their favorite Czech author. Nobody did so. Later on, some of the students told me informally that they were afraid that they might name an incorrect author and thus get into trouble.

A postgraduate student at Glasgow University recently conducted interviews with Czech schoolteachers about Romany children. When studying the answers, it struck me how monotonous they were. All of it was criticism of the Romany children from the point of view of white teachers.

Very few people here understand that reality is far too complicated to be summed up by a single view and that the only way we can hope to move toward a real understanding of reality is by trial and error, by creatively comparing and contrasting the different, even conflicting views of life around us.

Creativity and independent thinking is being stifled in Czech schools, so no wonder so many cannot communicate at work. I don't know what can be done about this unsatisfactory state of affairs. Does anyone care?

Originally published in Czech Business Weekly HERE